بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful
I am not married and i know most who read this blog aren't either, but i think we can all learn a valuable lesson from this, not only for when we do get married(inshAllah), but for all other relationships in our lives. For dealing with friends, or family, or anyone else. Alright here it is:
A man and his fiance were married. It was a large celebration. All of their friends and family came to see the lovely ceremony and to partake of the festivities and celebrations. A wonderful time was had by all.
The bride was gorgeous in her white wedding gown and the groom was very dashing in his black tuxedo. Everyone could tell that the love they had for each other was true.
A few months later, the wife comes to the husband with a proposal: “I read in a magazine, a while ago, about how we can strengthen our marriage.” She offered.
“Each of us will write a list of the things that we find a bit annoying with the other person. Then, we can talk about how we can fix them together and make our lives happier together.”
The husband agreed. So each of them went to a separate room in the house and thought of the things that annoyed them about the other. They thought about this question for the rest of the day and wrote down what they came up with.
The next morning, at the breakfast table, they decided that they would go over their lists.
“I’ll start,” offered the wife. She took out her list. It had many items on it. Enough to fill 3 pages, in fact. As she started reading the list of the little annoyances, she noticed that tears were starting to appear in her husbands eyes.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Nothing” the husband replied, “keep reading your list.”
The wife continued to read until she had read all three pages to her husband. She neatly placed her list on the table and folded her hands over top of it.
“Now, you read your list and then we’ll talk about the things on both of our lists.” She said happily.
Quietly the husband stated, “I don’t have anything on my list. I think that you are perfect the way that you are. I don’t want you to change anything for me. You are lovely and wonderful and I wouldn’t want to try and change anything about you.”
The wife, touched by his honesty and the depth of his love for her and his acceptance of her, turned her head and wept.
***
This is not to say that you must overlook every fault in your partner. If a marriage partner is abusive, or is an alcoholic or drug addict, or is unfaithful, or something of that nature then yes of course there must be changes.
But when it comes to the little things, remember that we are all imperfect beings, struggling to worship our Creator as best we can, pursue our dreams, raise our families, put food on the table, and balance all of the above fairly. We all have faults. We all make mistakes.
If you go looking for faults in your partner you will find plenty, I guarantee it. You will find many mistakes, bad habits, and imperfections.
But you know what? If you look honestly in the mirror you will see the same things in yourself.
If you focus on your partner’s imperfections you will never be happy. You will always be dissatisfied, wanting more, feeling deprived, feeling frustrated. And you will end up making your partner miserable, and pushing your marriage into misery.
Instead, look for what is good in your partner. See his/her beauty, good habits, loving or kind gestures, relationship with the Creator, hidden potential, and hopes and dreams. If you look for beauty you will find it. Nurture that beauty by appreciating it, and it will grow. The love between you will deepen like a strong river, becoming more and more powerful over time. And those little things that used to bother you so much will seem not very important at all.
